Accel World, Vol. 12: The Red Crest by Kawahara Reki

Author:Kawahara, Reki
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yen Press
Published: 2017-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

6

A bright June 27. That day, too, the sky had been sprinkling them with rain since morning, as though the seasonal rain front was stubbornly sitting in the sky above Tokyo.

Having finished getting ready for school ten minutes earlier than usual, Haruyuki left the house with the slightly too-large umbrella that his father used to use in one hand. He headed south on the sidewalk of Kannana Street, slipped under the Chuo Line Bridge, and set his sights on the usual Koenjirikkyo intersection. It was Thursday, the day of the routine Ash-Crow duel.

According to rules that had been set at some point, the winner of the previous duel had to use a Burst Point to accelerate and challenge his opponent. But in the duel two days before, on Tuesday, Silver Crow and Ash Roller had both been struck by the lightning of the Thunder stage and had their gauges sent flying simultaneously.

In the case of a draw, the rule was they changed the challenging side, and according to this, it was Crow’s turn to be the challenger. However, even after he had climbed up the pedestrian walkway at the lights, Haruyuki did not connect to the global net, but rather kept going to descend on the inner-loop side of Kannana and come to a stop in front of a convenience store on the corner.

About two minutes later, a green EV bus stopped at the bus stop nearby. Only one passenger got off. After opening an off-white umbrella, she approached him at a trot, the pouch slung across her body, swinging from side to side.

“K-Kusakabe, don’t run. It’s—” The moment he hurriedly started speaking, a brown loafer slipped on the wet road. The girl lost her balance and listed first to the left, then the right—somehow, mysteriously, not falling down—until she managed to just barely bring herself to a stop right in front of Haruyuki.

He quickly pulled back arms he had started to stretch out to support her in case of the worst and said his greetings. “Morning, Kusakabe.”

“Good. Morning, Arita.” Bowing deeply along with her umbrella was, of course, Ash Roller in the real: Rin Kusakabe. Like Haruyuki, she was in eighth grade, but she attended a girls’ school in Sasazuka in Shibuya Ward; she commuted from her home in Egota in Nakano.

Sasazuka was on the Keio line, and the station a mere four stops farther out was the very Sakurajosui which they had visited the previous night. As the crow flies, they weren’t even four kilometers apart, but since the borders between Suginami, Shibuya, and Setagaya wards got complicated in that area, in the Accelerated World sense, the distance was greater than this small number. In fact, during the dive the previous day, Haruyuki had not once realized that Sasazuka station was fairly close by.

That said, there was no mistake that Shibuya Area No. 3, where Rin’s school was, was immediately adjacent to Setagaya area on the east. This fact caught at his thoughts for some reason, but Rin’s smile appearing from beneath the edge of her white umbrella instantly pushed the question away.

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